From: Argrath@aol.com
Date: Fri 13 May 1994 - 06:22:36 EEST
The Orlanth Rex cult appears in the long write-up in Heroes Vol.
I, #4. Those who serve on tribal councils in Maniria, Ralios,
and Peloria are temporary members, and tribal kings or chieftains
get to be permanent members. Rex status requires unanimous
acceptance by the tribal Storm Voices in addition to council
membership. Rexes get to order SV's around, and can get the
divine spells of Command Priests, Command Worshippers, and Detect
Honor (one-use for temporary members, reusable for kings).
Hm. Annilla has Moon, Darkness, and Sea. Perhaps she should teach all three appropriate Enchant Metals, but with only one available to a given area, depending on who's worshiping, viz:
Trolls : Lead Mermen : Seametal Lunars : Selenium
The argument for LM having Enchant Iron proves too much. If he has Iron because he collects knowledge, he should have all. But he's not a smith's cult. Also, Mostali view the statement that LM is Mostal's son as a blasphemous obscenity, as well as an impossibility. Machines don't have sons. I prefer to view the myth of LM's parentage as a way of saying he's a product of the union of Law and Truth.
I liked Guy Hoyle's explanation of why the Lunars want to take silver over, as a mythic statement. It's as good as we're likely to get.
Is anyone else bothered by the way that Terran metal effects have been carried over into Gloranthan without any Gloranthan rationale? I refer to silver's ability to injure creatures only injurable through magic. I think the ability should be limited to enchanted rune metals, but be given to all of them. Iron could possibly work even unenchanted, since it is the Bearer of Death.
Re: Trinity
I discussed this in a side-post with Joerg, but apparently I wasn't clear enough in my initial post. Stay with me here, I'm going to try to persuade you with reasoning.
Nothing in published works so much as hints at a Trinity in Malkionism. (Joerg pointed me to CoT, where the unnamed god of Malkionism is described as different from the Prime Mover and as having died in the Great Darkness. I believed he said that was two-thirds of a trinity right there, all we needed was the spirit. This is shoehorning of the worst sort. We know from the RQ Companion that the God Forgot people's god died, but there is no mention of this dead god in more recent publications. Check the copyright date on CoT--it's 1981. Lots has changed since then in Glorantha. For one thing, elves don't worship Pamalt; they're hostile to him. (See page 17 of CoT.) So CoT's usefulness is even more in question now than when it first came out. More recent works talk about the IG and saints, and say nothing about humanism or the Prime Mover.)
If a Trinity were important in a mainstream sect of Malkionism, it would have been mentioned in a published source, such as GoG or G:CHW. (Try writing a summary of Christianity without mentioning the Trinity, while discussing the Great Schism, the multiplicity of eastern rites, and offshoots like the Latter-Day Saints. It wouldn't be a very good summary. So the Pelagian heresy and the date of Easter in England aren't really relevant to the point I'm making. We have a summary of the Malkioni faith's various sects in GoG, with some more stuff in G:CHW and in the unpublished Invisible God write-up. No trinity there.)
Thus, the Trinity is not important in any mainstream sect of Malkionism. Q.E.D.
I leave open the possibility of all sorts of Errors and Heresies amongst the Stygians (in which category I lump Aeolians and even the Southbankers--if they don't like it, they can stop practicing heresy). But when we're talking about Rokari, Hrestoli, and even the Galvosti and Henotheists, we're talking about people who don't disagree, for gosh sakes, about the saint list, much less the persons of the high god (one). Not something you can say about Catholics and Episcopalians, these days (the saint list, that is). The Malkioni sects disagree about the things GoG says they disagree about: class mobility, the use of the Tap spell, and whether to worship the visible gods. There might be some interesting theology behind, frex, the argument over Tap, and I've seen some interesting explanations of this. But you're just kidding yourself if you see a Trinity here.
In amazement this actually required being spelled out,
I remain,
Argrath
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